Mariner 6 and 7 Missions Information

Mariners 6 and 7 were paired together, identical teammates in a two-spacecraft mission to Mars. The two spacecraft were launched 31 days apart using Atlas/Centaur rockets and they arrived at their closest approach to Mars (3,430 kilometers, or 2,130 miles) just four days apart. Between the two spacecraft, they transmitted to Earth a total of 143 pictures of Mars as they approached the planet and 55 close-up pictures as they flew past the equator and southern hemisphere. Refuting images taken by Mariner 4, Mariners 6 and 7's images, covering about 20% of the planet, revealed a surface quite different from Earth's moon. They showed Mars surface to have cratered deserts, as well as depressions with no craters, huge concentrically terraced impact regions, and collapsed ridges. The spacecraft also studied the atmosphere and its chemical composition.